Inside the Jackson Covered Bridge - Parke County, Indiana
by Susan Rissi Tregoning
Title
Inside the Jackson Covered Bridge - Parke County, Indiana
Artist
Susan Rissi Tregoning
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
Inside the Jackson Covered Bridge in Parke County, Indiana.
Jackson Covered Bridge, built in 1861, is the longest single-span covered bridge in Indiana. This is the first covered bridge J.J. Daniels constructed in Parke County, and it is widely considered Daniels’s best bridge of his 43-year covered bridge career.
An absolute masterpiece! At 207 feet long, the Jackson Bridge is a single-span double Burr Arch Truss double King Post bridge. With plenty of windows to illuminate Daniels’s fine craftsmanship on the inside, you can’t miss his graceful, perfectly curved double arches. The south upstream abutment contains a cornerstone that reads, “Builder J.J. Daniels 1861”, ensuring that everyone knew and never forgot that he built this bridge.
J.J. Daniels may have been showing quite a bit on this one, but that was a smart business move, considering he was new to Parke County and unknown to the locals. This bridge opened the doors for all his future Parke County bridge contracts.
Instead of the bridge being named after the local land owner since it was built at the beginning of the Civil War, J. J. Daniels chose to honor Andrew Jackson. Even adding a hand-lettered political statement above the portal: “The Federal Union: It must be preserved.” Likely paraphrasing Andrew Jackson’s quote: “To the Union, it must be preserved.” That is no longer seen today.
While Jackson Bridge is the name that stuck, the locals often referred to it by two other names. “Rockport Bridge,” after the long-forgotten village of Rockport that consisted of Wright’s Mill, a general store, a cooper shop, a blacksmith shop, two sawmills, and four homes. And also “Wright’s Mill Bridge.” The mill was gone by 1894, dynamited after the mill‘s dam washed out in 1882.
Copyright 2022 Susan Rissi Tregoning
Uploaded
December 23rd, 2022
Statistics
Viewed 3,626 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/24/2024 at 3:23 AM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet